


Boots on the Ground

by ACooper



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-11-29
Packaged: 2019-02-04 13:34:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12772143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ACooper/pseuds/ACooper
Summary: Jim Hopper, US Marine, deploys to Vietnam. The hardest part might be coming home again.Vietnam, New York, and Sara. A series of brief experiences in the lives of Jim and Diane Hopper.





	1. Chapter 1

**1965**

In two weeks Jim Hopper would leave sunny Southern California and ship off to some goddamned place called Phu Bai. That order had come to him typed onto a piece of paper with a big crooked crease down the middle. It said that his deployment would begin six weeks from the Monday before he read it, 'cause it had gotten caught up in bureaucracy like almost all documents did in the Marine Corps.

With just fourteen days left before they had to be aboard a plane to Southeast Asia, a lot of the guys went home. They were going to say goodbye to their girls and their mothers; they all had a pretty good idea how these deployments were ending. Hopper didn't have a girl or a mother worth saying goodbye to, so he spent his first night of leave in one of the rowdier bars on base and figured he'd start drinking now and not stop until he got back from Vietnam. And if he died over there at least he'd be too damn drunk to realize it. When he was three beers in, he decided he might as well chase a little tail, too, because he'd like a few birds mailing him nudey pictures while he was over there.

That was the night he met Sharon, and the night before he me Diane.

Diane was a pretty young thing from San Diego, a few years younger than him. She had a nice body, a sweet smile, and an acceptance letter to New York University on a bookshelf by her bed. She also had a cousin engaged to a guy out in Pendleton who was shipping out soon, so she came along saying she was there for support. They met in that seedy bar after the cousin dumped her off and went to sneak back into her fiance's barracks. Hopper first saw her getting chatted up by a couple drunk boots but decided to leave it well enough alone. He already had himself a lovely piece there called Joanne - or Joan, maybe. Either way, he figured he'd have this night with her locked down. But when he couldn't ignore the sounds of that poor girl at the bar trying to fight off those idiots, he heaved a sigh and told Johanna to hang on a second.

"Hey, assholes, she's not interested," he said gruffly, inserting himself between the girl and the boots. They tried to shoot back some insult or rebuttal, but they mostly slurred their words and spoke incoherently over each other. "Yeah, yeah, get the fuck outta here." They looked him up and down; the guys who were shipping out always had some kind of look about them, and those idiots must have seen it in him. Dead man walking. So they spat a couple choice words at him, and disappeared into the crowd with no real argument. "You okay?" he said, turning his head to look at the girl, and he saw that she had shocking blue eyes. Eyes that locked on his own and seemed to pierce right down into his gut. 

She nodded. She smiled at him. That was all it took. Hopper never went back to Jenny that night. He and Diane spent the night talking. When the bar turned the music down and the lights up, they walked together out into the dark, talking. That was the first night they spent together. Mostly they talked. They slept together, too, but what he really remembered about the next week they spent together was how much they talked. He admitted to her that he was afraid; he hadn't said that to anyone else. She didn't try to make him feel better. She just listened. He liked that. 

Diane went home six days before he got sent out. He didn't tell her he'd write her. He didn't even tell her he'd miss her. Truthfully, up until a few days prior, he'd had every intention of getting blown to smithereens over there. Until one morning he caught himself focusing on the dog tag laced up in his boots. He had expected that tag to inform whomever found that boot that the rest of James Hopper, no religious preference, was scattered around that rice paddy or village or wherever. Now that thought made him uncomfortable. He thought maybe he'd try to make it home after all. If they shipped him back in a box, Diane wouldn't go to his funeral. Hell, she probably wouldn't even know he was dead. He thought he'd really like to see that girl again, and when he closed his eyes on the long flight to Hell, he dreamed about her.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The year is 1967 and Hopper is finally going home. Until he isn't.

**1967**

When Jim was driving home to Indiana with discharge papers under his sun visor and a cigarette burning down to ash between his lips, he pulled over someplace in Tennessee to fill his gas tank. As he approached the counter to pay for the ten gallons and a pack of smokes, the old man there called him 'son' and 'Devil Dog.' Hopper's high-and-tight and empty gaze were as telling as wearing cammies. "It's on me, son," the old vet said. "Welcome home."

 _Jesus fucking Christ_ , he thought to himself back in the car, pounding the pack of Camels against his palm. Was that it for him now? Jim Hopper, the one who came back? That would be how they looked at him back home -- sadly, like he was damaged. Which maybe he was, but people didn't need to fucking see it. It was all old gas station vets for him now. He pictured himself spending nights down at the VFW, throwing darts and drinking beers and remembering the service fondly. _Jesus Christ_ , he thought again.

Jim smoked a couple of cigarettes down to the filters before he made a decision. He didn't die in Vietnam and he wasn't ready to waste away in Hawkins, either. So when he fired the car back up he didn't head home. He decided to go to New York, the first place he could think of, where there was a woman whose face was the first thing he saw when he daydreamed. She wrote him letters during the war saying he should come visit her someday, and she signed each one "Be well, Diane." That felt like a long time ago, and the time they'd spent together once was just a far-off memory now. He wasn't even sure that she still lived there.

But if Hawkins, Indiana was death, the idea of a place where he could fade into anonymity, well, that sounded like living. If he found that girl he'd gone and fell for back then, that'd just make the city sweeter. That was a little spark of hope for Hopper, just enough to make him take the first exit heading east, just enough to get him to New York City.


	3. Chapter 3

**1973**

His days were spent at the police academy in Manhattan and his nights at the apartment he shared with Diane in Queens. It was August, hot and humid even after the sun went down. They left the windows open in the hopes of catching a breeze, but mainly it was just the sounds of stray cats yowling that drifted in. 

Hopper spent most of his nights awake, his body aching for sleep but his mind racing, staring at the ceiling or looking at the same page in a book he just couldn’t focus on. He would listen to the sound of Diane breathing and try to drift off. Most nights. This night was one when he didn’t want to be alone with his thoughts. 

“Dee,” he whispered. She stirred. Louder, he repeated, “Diane.”

“Mm. Yeah?” She squinted at him, half blinded by the bedside lamp. 

“What happened to your cousin’s fiancé?” he asked. He couldn’t get him out of his head. The fiancé that had brought her and her cousin down to the base before deployment in 1965. 

Diane shifted her weight onto her elbow and propped herself up. “Margaret?” she said hazily, then corrected herself, “Tommy. Tommy died, baby.”

He nodded. Tommy died. He knew that, though. “What happened?”

She hesitated, he saw it. She always chose her words carefully when the conversation shifted to the war. Most times he appreciated it, but Jim just wanted to hear the truth now. “I don’t know,” she said. “Margaret didn’t talk about it.” She must have seen it in his face that that wasn’t enough, so she said quietly, “I’m sorry.”

So that was that. A hazy question mark at the end of a man’s life. Hopper eased back against his pillow, looking out of the window on the far wall. There was a stoplight that washed that window in a red light. It was soothing, in a way, it reminded him of a lit up Christmas tree. It was one of the things he would remember fondly when he thought back to that crappy first apartment. It was the place where they got engaged. 

“Marry me.” It wasn’t a question. He struggled with romantic gestures and he didn’t have the money to buy her a ring. But he looked sideways at her and grinned.

She loved that grin. It was rakish and charming and made her blush. “Really?”

“Yeah. Yeah, really,” Hopper said. He loved Diane and wanted to be with her, he didn’t want to be some afterthought from her past. What ever happened to that guy Jim? He’s gone, I think. Maybe he died. She doesn’t like to talk about it. 

It was just a month and a few days later that they were getting married down at City Hall. No fuss, no guests, no long ceremony, but she still looked beautiful in her white cotton sundress. That was the day that Jim and Diane promised each other ‘Til death do we part,’ which turned out to be true. They’d only assumed the death would be one of theirs.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When roles are reversed and it's Diane who is awake in the middle of the night.

**1975**

People were telling her to sleep now, because when the baby came there wouldn't be any time for sleeping. Diane thought that had to be bullshit because she'd never slept worse in her life. Her back ached and there were shooting pains in her hips that never seemed to go away. Every night was a fight to get comfortable in bed, an exercise in pillow-structural-engineering as she tried to stack two here or slip one under there, and even if she did manage to find an acceptable position her baby spent the nights kicking and rolling like an acrobat.

That was why she was so irritated by Jim's snoring. She squinted at him in the darkness, watching his chest rise and fall and listening to his damned snoring. Why should he get to sleep when she had so much trouble? In a moment of weakness, Diane reached over and jabbed him in the side with her thumb. He grunted, but rolled from his back to his side and didn't wake up.

Diane laid her hands on her belly, feeling how her baby kicked and punched. She had only a handful of weeks left before her baby would be born, and people would start telling her things like 'Sleep when baby sleeps' or 'Don't let baby nap too long or he'll stay awake all night.' Diane just wanted to feel like her body belonged to herself again. She sighed and whispered, "Jim?" Then again, louder, "Jim!"

His eyes fluttered open and he asked thickly, "Yeah?" He was normally harder to rouse but the threat of labor lingered in his mind these days. Diane saying his name was sure to get his attention.

"Sara."

Jim rolled over to face her, blinking sleepily. "What?"

"I want to name the baby Sara," she said, adding, "if it's a girl."

He was awake enough now. He wiped sleep from his eyes. "Sara?" he echoed. "Isn't that your grandma's name?"

"Isn't that sweet?"

He yawned, peering up at her curiously. "You don't like your grandma."

Diane swatted at his arm. "I love my grandmother!"

"You called her a crazy old bat," he said.

"Oh, well, she is," she conceded. "But the name is still pretty."

Jim repeated, "Sara." He let it roll around in his head for a moment, his eyes closing. Diane thought he might fall back to sleep in his long silence until he repeated, "Sara?"

"Sara," Diane agreed.

"Well," he said with a heaving sigh, "what does the kid think?"

A smile spread across Diane's lips; she knew she'd already won. "Here," she said, guiding his hand onto her belly, "feel." The baby tumbled and danced.

Eyes still closed, Jim nodded. "All right. I can't argue with that."

She laid her hands over his, feeling like she might cry. "I love you."

"You too," he murmured heavily. "Go to sleep."

"And Thomas if it's a boy."

Jim smirked, one eye half opening to look at her. He saw her grinning. "Don't push your luck. Go to sleep, Dee."


End file.
